far removed from our nature" vuv CeoTo μ." For the first time in my life, I could not help being ashamed of my youth, and feeling, as if it were presumption in me to approach, in the garb of modern days, the last living relics of that venerable school.

The appearance of the fine old man had no tendency to dissipate the feelings I have just attempted to describe. I found him in his library, surrounded with a very large collection of books-few of them apparently new ones-seated in a high-backed easy chair-the wood work carved very richly in the ancient French taste, and covered with black bair cloth. On his head he wore a low cap of black velvet, like those which we see in almost all the pictures of Pope. But there needed none of these accessories to carry back the imagination. It is impossible that I should paint to you the full image of that face. 'The only one I ever saw which bore any resemblance to its character, was that of Warren Hastings-you well remember the effect it produced, when he appeared among all that magnificent assemblage, to take his degree at the installation of Lord Greenville. In the countenance of McKenzie, there is the same clear transparency of skin, the same freshness of complexion, in the midst of all the extenuation of old age. The wrinkles, too, are set close to each other, line upon line; not deep and bold, and rugged, like those of most old men, but equal and undivided over the whole surface, as if no touch but that of Time had been there, and as if even He had traced the vestiges of his dominion with a sure, indeed, but with a delicate and reverential finger. The lineaments have all the appearance of having been beautifully shaped, but the want of his teeth has thrown them out of their natural relation to each other. The eyes alone had bid defiance to the approach of the adversary. Beneath bleached and hoary brows, and surrounded with innumerable wrinkles, they are still as tenderly, as brightly blue, as full of all the various eloquence and fire of passion, as they could have been in the most vivacious of his days, when they were lighted up with that purest and loftiest of all earthly flames, the first secret triumph of conscious and conceiving genius.

By and by, Mr. McKenzie withdrew into his closet, and having there thrown off his slippers, and exchanged his cap for a brown wig, he conducted me to the drawing room. His family were already assembled to receive us-his wife, just as

I should have wished to picture her, a graceful old lady, witfr much of the remains of beauty, clothed in an open gown of black silk, with deep flounces, and having a high cap, with the lace meeting below the chin-his eldest son, a man rather above my own standing, who is said to inherit much of the genius of his father, (although he has chosen to devote it to very different purposes-being very eminent among the advocates of the present time)-and some younger children. The only visiter, beside myself, was an old friend, and, indeed, cotemporary of McKenzie, a Mr. R, who was, in his time, at the head of the profession of the law in Scotland; but who has now lived for many years in retirement. I have never seen a finer specimen, both in appearance and manners, of the true gentleman of the last age. In his youth, he must have been a perfect model of manly beauty; and, indeed, no painter could select a more exquisite subject for his art even now. His hair combed back from his forehead and highly powdered, his long queue, his lace ruffles, his suit of snuffcoloured cloth, cut in the old liberal way, with long flaps to his waistcoat, his high-heeled shoes and rich steel-bucklesevery thing was perfectly in unison with the fashion of his age. The stately and measured decorum of his politeness was such, as could not well be displayed by any man dressed in our free-and-easy style; but in him it did not produce the least effect of stiffness or coldness. It was a delightful thing to see these two old men, who bad rendered themselves eminent in two so different walks of exertion, meeting together in the quiet evening of their days, to enjoy in the company of each other every luxury which intellectual communication can afford, heightened by the yet richer luxury of talking over the feelings of times to which they almost alone are not strangers.

They are both perfectly men of the world, so that there was not the least tinge of professional pedantry in their conversation. As for Mr. McKenzie, indeed, literature was never any thing more than an amusement to him, however great the figure he has made in it, and the species of literature in which he excelled was, in its very essence, connected with any ideas rather than those of secluded and artist-like abstraction. There was nothing to be seen which could have enabled a stranger to tell which was the great lawyer, and which the great novelist. I confess, indeed, I was a little astonished to find, from Mr. McKenzie's mode of conversation, how very little

bis habits had ever been those of a mere literary man. He talked for at least half an hour, and, I promise you, very knowingly, about flies for angling; and told me, with great good humour, that he still mounts his poney in autumn, and takes the field against the grouse, with a long fowling-piece slung from his back, and a pointer bitch, to the full as venerable among her species as her affectionate master is among his. The lively vivacity with which he talked over various little minute circumstances of his last campaign in the moors, and the almost buoyish keenness with which he seemed to be looking forward to the time of trouting-all this might have been looked upon as rather frivolous, and out of place, in another of his years; but, for my part, I could not help being filled both with delight and admiration, by so uncommon a display of elasticity in the springs of his temperament.

He gave us an excellent bottle of Muscat-de-Rives-altes during dinner, and I must say I am inclined very much to approve of that old-fashioned delicacy. We had no lack of Château-la-Rose afterwards, and neither of the old gentlemen seemed to have the slightest objection to its inspiration. A truly charming air of sober hilarity was diffused over their features, and they began to give little sketches of the old times, in which, perhaps, their hilarity might not always be so sober, in a way that carried me back delightfully to the very heart of "High-jinks." According to the picture they gave, the style of social intercourse in this city, in their younger days, seems, indeed, to have been wonderfully easy and captivating. At that time, you must know, not one stone of the New Town, in which they, and all the fashionable inhabitants of Edinburgh now reside, had been erected. The whole of the genteel population lived crowded together in those tall citadels of the Old Town, from one of which my friend W still refuses to be dislodged. Their houses were small, but abundantly neat and comfortable, and the labour which it cost to ascend to one of them was sure to be repaid at all hours by a hearty welcome from its possessor. The style of visiting, altogether, was as different as possible from the ceremonious sort of fashion now in vogue. They did not deal in six weeks' invitations and formal dinners; but they formed, at a few hours' notice, little snug supperparties, which, without costing any comparative expense, afforded opportunities a thousand-fold for all manner of friendly communication between the sexes. As for the gen

tlemen, they never thought of committing any excess, except in taverns, and at night; and Mr. R- mentioned, that, almost within his own recollection, it had been made matter of very serious aggravation in the offence of a gentleman of rank, tried before the Court of Justiciary, that he had allowed his company to get drunk in his house before it was dark, even in the month of July. At that time, the only liquor was claret, and this they sent for just as they wanted it-huge pewter jugs, or, as they called them, stoups of claret, being just as commonly to be seen travelling the streets of Edinburgh in all directions then, as the mugs of Mieux and Barclay are in those of London now. Of course, I made allowance for the privilege of age; but I have no doubt there was abundance of good wit, and, what is better, good-humour among them, no less than of good claret. If I were to take the evening I spent in listening to its history, as a fair specimen of the" Auld Time," (and after all, why should I not?) I should almost be inclined to reverse the words of the Laueate, and to say,

"of all places, and all times of earth,

Did fate grant choice of time and place to men

Wise choice might be their ScoTLAND, and their THEN.”

I assure you, however, that I returned to my hotel in no disposition to quarrel either with time or place, or "any other creature"--a bottle of excellent wine under my belt, and my mind richly dieted with one of the true Noctes Canæque. Ever yours,

P. M.

and his

P. S. I had forgotten to mention, that both Mfriend are staunch Tories; but I don't deny, that this might have some effect in increasing my love for them.

LETTER XI.

TO THE SAME.

I HEARD it mentioned at Mr. McKenzie's, that a triennial dinner, in honour of Robert Burns, was about to take place ; and thinking it would be a good opportunity for me to see a

larger number of Scots literati than I had yet met with collected together, I resolved, if possible, to make one of the party. I found, on inquiring, that in consequence of the vast multitude of persons who wished to be present, the original plan of the dinner had been necessarily departed from, and the company were to assemble, not in a tavern, for no tavern in Edinburgh could accommodate them, but in the Assembly-Rooms in George-Street. Even so, I was told, there was likely to be a deficiency rather than a superfluity of room; and, indeed, when I went to buy my ticket, I found no more remained to be sold. But I procured one afterwards through Mr. McKenzie ; and Warriving from the country the same day, I went to the place in company with him. He is hand in glove with half of the stewards, and had no difficulty in getting himself smuggled in. I send you a copy of the Edinburgh Weekly Journal, which contains the best newspaper account of the affair I have met with, but shall proceed to favour you with a few of my own observations in addition.

Those who are accustomed to talk and think of the Scotch as a cold phlegmatic people, would have been convinced of their mistake by a single glance at the scene which met my eyes when I entered. I have never witnessed a more triumphant display of national enthusiasm, and had never expected to witness any display within many thousand degrees of it, under any thing else than the instantaneous impulse of some glorious victory. The room is a very large one, and I had already seen it lighted up in all the splendour of a ball; but neither its size nor its splendour had then made any thing more than a very common-place impression on my mind. But now-what a sight was here! A hall of most majestic proportions-its walls, and hangings, and canopies of crimson, giving a magical richness of effect to the innumerable chandeliers with which its high roof appeared to be starred and glowing the air overhead alive with the breath of lutes and trumpets-below, the whole mighty area paved with human faces, (for the crowd was such that nothing of the tables could at first be seen,)—the highest, and the wisest, and the best of a nation assembled together-and all for what? to do honour to the memory of one low-born peasant. What a lofty tribute to the true nobility of Nature !--What a glorious vindication of the born majesty of Genius!